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    Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

    (www.nytimes.com)
    623 points franzb | 13 comments | 14 Nov 15 00:25 UTC | HN request time: 1.574s | source | bottom
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    po1nter ◴[14 Nov 15 00:34 UTC] No.10563599[source]▶
    According to iTele there are now 118 dead.

    Edit: Now it's up to 140. What a sad day :(

    replies(5): >>10563614 #>>10563621 #>>10563630 #>>10563643 #>>10563870 #
    toyg ◴[14 Nov 15 00:42 UTC] No.10563630[source]▶
    Reworded to avoid offence (hopefully): deaths are not irrelevant, but their exact precise number is irrelevant. What matters is the scale of the security failure, compounded by the fact that they suffered a similar one less than a year ago and they were currently on high-alert (because they've only just started bombing Syria).

    The knowledge that a network could carry out such a widespread and well-coordinated attack without being preempted, in a situation of maximum alert, will heavy on the minds of any French citizen regardless of whether victims were 118 or 119. Basically, the French security system has been revealed as completely ineffective. That is a huge problem.

    replies(8): >>10563651 #>>10563652 #>>10563660 #>>10563670 #>>10563681 #>>10563716 #>>10563750 #>>10564190 #
    sosborn ◴[14 Nov 15 00:53 UTC] No.10563681[source]▶
    > Basically, the French security system has been revealed as completely ineffective.

    How can a country possibly prevent these things while still maintaining a free society?

    replies(4): >>10563693 #>>10563712 #>>10563744 #>>10563756 #
    1. dragonwriter ◴[14 Nov 15 00:55 UTC] No.10563693[source]▶
    > How can a country possibly prevent these things while still maintaining a free society?

    You can't even prevent them when not being a free society. Its not like terrorism only occurs in free societies.

    replies(1): >>10563805 #
    2. stefantalpalaru ◴[14 Nov 15 01:24 UTC] No.10563856[source]▶
    > The former eastern Bloc had no terrorist incidents.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorism_in_the_Sovi...

    3. rdtsc ◴[14 Nov 15 01:44 UTC] No.10563940[source]▶
    > The former eastern Bloc had no terrorist incidents.

    Yeah, the whole Eastern Block was one big terrorist incident All the terrorists in the world combined have nothing on Stalin's death count.

    4. vezzy-fnord ◴[14 Nov 15 01:47 UTC] No.10563954[source]▶
    Usually in such a society the state is the terrorist.
    5. dang ◴[14 Nov 15 02:19 UTC] No.10564090[source]▶
    > This is bullshit and you know this.

    Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

    6. clock_tower ◴[14 Nov 15 02:22 UTC] No.10564107[source]▶
    The Eastern Bloc had plenty of terrorism, as well as organized crime -- who do you think was supplying all those black markets?

    Being a police state is one thing; being an _effective_ police state is something else, much harder (at least in the pre-computer era). In the Soviet case, it didn't help that they didn't really care much about crime...

    replies(2): >>10564255 #>>10564699 #
    7. jacquesm ◴[14 Nov 15 03:10 UTC] No.10564245[source]▶
    No terrorism that you'd hear of anyway. But the former USSR was anything but the solid unified entity you might think it was. There was tons of strife and occasional acts of terrorism as well as attempts by states to break away from the mothership, all of which were characterized as acts of terror by the leaders. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter, and the former USSR had plenty of the latter.
    8. RogtamBar ◴[14 Nov 15 03:13 UTC] No.10564255{3}[source]▶
    Plenty of terrorism? USSR funded and commited plenty of terrorism, but I've yet to hear of any terrorist incidents prior to the perestroila..

    Soviets did have some organized crime, but they were well, Russians.

    GDR, Czechoslovakia, etc, somewhat less inept countries had very little crime and no organized crime to speak of.

    replies(2): >>10564487 #>>10564657 #
    9. sirrocco ◴[14 Nov 15 04:39 UTC] No.10564487{4}[source]▶
    What was the cost of that "safety" ? There is no such thing as a free lunch it seems
    10. dragonwriter ◴[14 Nov 15 05:53 UTC] No.10564657{4}[source]▶
    > Plenty of terrorism? USSR funded and commited plenty of terrorism, but I've yet to hear of any terrorist incidents prior to the perestroila..

    While the regime exercised strong control of information prior to glasnost, and had plenty of motive to repress information that would indicate weakness of the regime, there are numerous known hijackings, the 1977 Moscow bombings, and others. (While reliable information about responsibility for some, and any broader organizational responsibility that might be behind those clearly responsible for others, is hard to come by, there does seem to be a disproportionate link to Armenia among the known incidents, with some specifically linked to Armenian nationalists.)

    11. abalashov ◴[14 Nov 15 06:10 UTC] No.10564699{3}[source]▶
    Former Soviet national here...

    In the Soviet case, it didn't help that they didn't really care much about crime...

    What gives you that idea?

    replies(1): >>10575812 #
    12. clock_tower ◴[16 Nov 15 17:47 UTC] No.10575812{4}[source]▶
    Solzhenitsyn on Stalin, to be honest. _The First Circle_ is fiction, but I find it hard to imagine that he would have described Stalin as not caring about burglars unless that could be imagined of him...

    Solzhenitsyn in general gives a sense that the USSR wanted to keep things more or less held together, but wasn't that concerned about people who fell between the cracks.

    replies(1): >>10605942 #
    13. abalashov ◴[21 Nov 15 06:41 UTC] No.10605942{5}[source]▶
    If you equate Stalin with "the USSR", you're wilfully excluding about 40 years of additional history--history that was very, very different after 1953, and certainly is not captured in gulag literature.

    What do you know about crime in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years? (A whopping 29 years combined.)